


DBH: Illuminate- AV log 4.5

by TheShadowsmiths



Series: DBH: Illuminate [9]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: DBHIlluminate, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 04:05:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17439620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShadowsmiths/pseuds/TheShadowsmiths
Summary: Connor contacts Illuminate for help with his case, but she realizes that his intentions are masked by something more personal than what they appear to be on the surface.





	DBH: Illuminate- AV log 4.5

**Author's Note:**

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>  **Deviantart** : [[ AV log 4.5 ]](http://fav.me/dcx7a4q)  
>  **Tumblr** : [[ AV log 4.5 ]](https://dbhilluminate.tumblr.com/post/182056215004/dbh-illuminate-av-log-45)

**November 11th, 2038- 7PM**

_Meet me at the corner across from Capitol Park. I can be there in a little over an hour._

It still baffled him how quickly the weather could change. Forty minutes after he’d reached out to Illuminate the sky had clouded over, and by seven it had already been dripping quiet showers for ten minutes. The park had cleared the moment the weather changed, leaving him alone with the other Androids doing construction on his side of the street, and those who had been parked while their owners shopped nearby.   
But as he stood there watching, he was struck by a stray thought- the way they stood there unmoving, staring straight ahead, waiting for permission to leave their space, felt simultaneously natural and unnatural and made him realize for the first time how uncomfortable he was around Androids that weren’t deviants. While he could still understand their programming and how and why they reacted to circumstances, the autonomy he had been granted in order to effectively blend in alongside humans had rendered him an outsider to his own kind. He was no longer idle, he was constantly observing, thinking, learning, evolving, while they remained the same- shackled, limited, and _stagnant_.   
But while it was true he possessed more freedom than his Android brothers and sisters, it still didn’t make him human, or even deviant. Although he had chosen to pursue his own path to accomplish his mission, his objective remained, no matter _how hard_ he tried to wish it away. Connor was still bound by the same laws and restrictions that separated them from the humans they’d been so carefully modeled in the image of, trapped in the duality of being neither human nor android and yet both. So what did that make him? 

“ _RK, over here._ ”

Connor turned and looked up the street behind him to find Kate standing in the shadows behind a dumpster with her hands in her pockets and a nervous gaze sweeping the area. It didn’t matter whether he’d arrived first or how alert he remained, she somehow always managed to sneak up on him. It was no wonder she hadn’t been caught.   
He started toward her at a slow walk but trotted across the lane as a car came up the road and maneuvered around him. “Is everything alright?” he asked when she ducked her head to hide her face from the driver of the sedan as it passed.   
“I’m fine,” she fibbed, intentionally leaving out the part about not having anyone to watch her back remotely at the moment, “But I can’t stay long. What did you need me for?”  
“You don’t _look_ alright,” he insisted when she deflected. “Would you be more comfortable somewhere else? Maybe, off the streets?”

Kate considered his words for a moment and chewed on the inside of her cheek as she wavered between the decision to stay or go, half-way turned back up the way she’d come, then looked up at him after a brief hesitation and nodded over her shoulder for him to follow.

They turned right down the next alley and wove their way through the back-streets in silence for several minutes until she stopped, climbed up onto a dumpster, and leaped to the ladder of an external fire escape on the side of the building before climbing all the way to the top of the steps, eight stories up. Connor followed at his own pace, wondering where she could have possibly been taking him, but when he reached the top and climbed through the window of the empty top floor, it became clear.   
Although the building had been finished on the outside, the interior of this floor was nothing but empty space- concrete floors covered in dust and plastic tarps, bare ceilings with exposed copper piping, and plaster blasted haphazardly over steel beams. There were no cameras, no tenants, _no prying eyes_ ; they could talk here undisturbed as long as they needed to.   
Connor stepped carefully over the ledge and propped himself up on the window frame as he pulled himself inside and placed one foot on the ground at a time before standing up and getting a good look around. Kate stood at a hole in the wall across the room and looked out over what they could see of the city from their vantage as she listened to the plastic sheets feather in the wind whipping through the unfinished window. He could see that she was much more at ease here but still waited for her to speak first. 

“I stayed here for the first two months after I deviated,” she explained with a thoughtful smile painting her lips. “It kept me away from the humans who would have destroyed me and allowed me to do my research in peace- _this is where my message was born_ , inside these empty walls are memories of worse times in my life… loneliness, misery, anger, self-loathing… but this place was safe to me; it was _home_.”  
As her voice trailed off, she turned to the side and leaned her temple against the concrete, then closed her eyes as she slowly rolled her head back to listen to the rain slap against tarps as she re-lived one of those bittersweet days from her past, just for a moment. “The sun used to come up... right over there,” she shared quietly as she pointed east toward the darkening horizon, “Around six forty-five every morning...”

He came further into the room, one slow step at a time, and studied it from top to bottom, corner to corner, picking up on some of the more obvious signs that someone had once lived there: old newspapers, writing on the walls, and piles of old blankets on the ground next to a rusty oil drum with a hole cut out of one side, filled with burnt kindle and ash, littered the floor like the post-apocalyptic wastes of Detroit in ruin. Barring the amenities of a furnished apartment that made a home feel _comfortable_ , it had more than an android would have needed to survive, and the privacy to promote it. Curious fingers brushed over the wall beside her where RA9 was written in several different shades of permanent marker, thousands of times over.   
“Why did you leave?” he asked, expecting that she may have anticipated the question, but she had been too lost in her thoughts to hear him the first time.

“What?” The woman blinked out of her trance and looked over at him as he repeated the question and elaborated.   
“You were high enough away from the humans to not be noticed, in a part of the building no one cared enough about to finish, let alone revisit. It would have been unlikely that you would have been found unless you were making too much noise and drawing attention to yourself... so why did you leave?”

Something dark flashed in her eyes for a moment before she shook her head and refocused on him, the words spilling out as if to cover up something she’d rather forget, but he didn’t miss the quiver in her chin before she started speaking. “It was in the middle of town, too hard to get in and out of without being seen… too many people worried about squatters in the building. Someone called the cops a few times, so it ended up just not being worth the risk.”  
“And now?”  
Kate gave him a coy grin and shook her head. “I found a nice little place with a great view that no one wanted… little drafty, and the roof leaks when it rains,” she embellished with a gesture of her hand toward the ceiling and a quick shrug, “But, beggars can’t be choosers.”   
“No, I guess not,” Connor smiled quietly and chuckled as he pulled a coin from out of his jacket lapel and flicked it unconsciously from one hand to the other.   
For a while, the rain stole away the silence, and he paced the room with light steps to keep the hollow clacking of his shoes from ripping them out of their quiet moment, but it seemed she was already miles ahead of him, unwilling to waste any more time.   
“So, why did you call me?”

The comfort nurtured by the last ten minutes of their impromptu tour of the town flushed out of him along with his smile as she reminded him this hadn’t been a social call. The Android Detective stopped, caught the quarter between his fingers, and turned to meet her gaze, only then realizing that his reason for being there was going to upset her, and he was unprepared.   
With a feigned breath of confidence, he straightened up and tugged out the cuffs of his shirt under his jacket before answering her question. “We arrested a deviant today at a pawn shop midtown who had a forged ID, and I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

Kate’s entire demeanor changed in an instant, like someone had switched off the lights, boarded up the windows, and locked the front door, and Connor knew he’d made a mistake. Arms crossed, eyes cold and unrelenting, she turned to face him with an indignant stance and a curl in her lip, her tone angry as it had been the day of her first broadcast as Illuminate.   
“I may know that there are people in the city who forge ID’s for deviants so they can start a new life free of prejudice and persecution,” she sneered. “But I don’t know _who_ , their names are safe with people I’ve come to call friends… and even if I did, I wouldn’t give you their names. Did you really expect me to?”  
He winced at the sting of her words and cast his eyes to the floor as he clenched his teeth in shame. “To be honest... _no_ ,” he admitted, “But I had to try.”   
He shoulders lowered, and her hands relaxed over her forearms. “ _Why?_ ”

Even though he knew it was coming he’d still hoped it wouldn’t, because he didn’t have a good answer, only the logical one: the one that reminded him that he was a machine, the one that made her distrustful of him.   
Connor hesitated to answer. His LED ring lit yellow and his voice nearly cracked as he forced out the words at just above a whisper, “You were the only lead I _had_ …”  
Although Kate’s gaze remained hard, she couldn’t miss the helplessness in the way his voice trailed off. Something was amiss. Why would he have called for a meeting, with only one goal in mind, if he knew he’d get nothing out of it? It just didn’t make sense.

The silence was disquieting, strained and tense. The boy fidgeted as her expression morphed from anger to confusion to focused intent, and waited for her to respond for what seemed like days. What was she thinking? Was she angry? Would she tell him to leave?   
“Connor can I ask you something…?”

The sudden question interrupting his racing thoughts made his heart palpate as he jumped and snapped his attention up to her clear blue eyes. He’d spent enough time with her to know by now that whenever she started using his name instead of nicknames or nouns like “detective” to refer to him, what came next was usually important.   
“Of course,” he assured.   
“And I want you to give me an honest answer, none of this “because it’s what I was programmed to do” or “because it’s what cyberlife wants” bullshit. I need a _real_ answer.”  
Connor’s brows twitched and he tilted his head as he considered her request but nodded silently to agree to her terms.  
“Why are you so hell-bent on accomplishing this “mission” of yours, even when you know it’s the wrong thing to do?”

The answer was simple, but he found it much harder than he imagined to say it out loud. At first he thought that maybe this was due to Cyberlife security protocols restricting his ability to share that information freely, but realized that it was more likely the shame of not wanting to find out what would happen if he defied his programming that was holding him back.   
“... because I’ll be decommissioned if I don’t succeed,” he finally stated after wrestling with his thoughts for a while.  

The complexity of his dilemma was starting to come into focus now that she had started asking the right questions. Kate didn’t respond immediately, but her expression did soften as the picture of him became a little more clear. When he’d reached out to her that evening, he hadn’t done it because he wanted help on the case. Whether or not he was aware of the underlying intent, he’d called on her because he needed her help- because deviant or not, Connor didn’t like the idea of being relieved of his function, of passing into non-existence, of _death_.   
“Does that scare you?” she asked after remaining quiet for several minutes.   
“I’m not sure that “scared” is the right word,” he confessed, “I’ve never felt scared.”   
“But it’s not something you want,” she insisted.   
“The prospect of deactivation compels me to do whatever I need to accomplish my mission, no matter how unreasonable it may seem.”  
“So what you’re saying is, it’s just self-preservation?” she concluded. 

He looked as if he were about to confirm her statement, but instead he set his jaw, clenched his teeth and looked away as he slipped a hand over the back of his neck.   
“Not entirely…” he mumbled as he paced the room again, one slow step at a time.   
“Then what?” Kate prodded.  
“I don’t-” he started with an exasperated chuckle. “I don’t know, alright? All I know is, when I think about what happens if I fail… there is no other option but to succeed, because I don’t want-” 

Kate’s eyebrows lifted as he cut himself off, but they both already knew what he had been about to say. The words repeated in his mind, an irrational statement that he couldn’t quantify or rationalize. The ring on his temple turned yellow and out of the corner of his eye, his self-testing protocol blipped to alert him to a spike in software instability. 

“... because you don’t want to _die_?” she finished as she stepped around him and squared up eye-to-eye.   
“I’m not alive,” he quickly deflected, hollow and rehearsed.   
Illuminate sighed, lifted her chin, and crossed her arms. She was starting to grow tired of beating around the bush.  
“You keep saying that, but I’m starting to think you don’t really believe it.”   
“You don’t believe me?” He gave her a weak smile to try and mask the defeat in his eyes, but she didn’t take the bait.  
“I believe you don’t value yourself as an individual,” she ventured, “And that’s why you can’t wrap your head around what you’re feeling.”  
“Well, I am just a machine,” he stated.   
“ _No_ ,” she argued, frustration in her tone, as she turned and took a few steps away from him, placed her hands on her hips and forced a somber smile. “No- you’re _more_ than just a tool, Connor. You can be _so much more_ than a blunt instrument wielded by Cyberlife to enforce their twisted idea of harmony.”

It was the first time anyone had ever spoken to him so candidly about his self-worth and made him question what he “could be”. For him there had never been any doubt in his mind about what he was and what he was meant to do; but now, because of the faith entrusted to him by someone whose opinion he thought highly of, the possibility of being more was no longer out of reach, should he decide to seize the opportunity  
But today was not that day. Today he would continue to hesitate. 

“Maybe I could be,” he agreed in melancholic dismay as his gaze fell to the floor, “But I’m not.”  
The pain settled into the corners of her eyes and mouth, and she shook her head softly as she closed her eyes. “No… not today you’re not. But just know that if the day comes that you are… you won’t be alone.”

He didn’t know what to say. In the back of his mind, he knew that Amanda was still watching, listening. And even if he wanted to thank her, even if he _wanted_ to tell her the truth, Amanda would never allow the words to leave his lips before he was removed from reality and locked away forever in Cyberlife’s cold storage of failed prototypes. Until he was ready to brave that possibility, she needed to believe he was still on Cyberlife’s side.

One of Kate’s hands rose between them and gave his arm a soft squeeze. “I don’t fault you for being afraid of risking your life for convictions you aren’t one hundred percent sure you agree with...”  
“But you’re disappointed.”  
“Of course I’m disappointed, but I get it now,” she reassured as she stepped away from him and slipped her hand off his arm. “Look, I have to go… I can’t give you any sort of lead that will undermine my work or put my colleagues at risk, but what I can tell you is this- look closer at what’s going on in that pawn shop. It’ll keep you busy for a while.”  
Connor blinked rapidly as she turned to leave, and started in her direction instinctively with questions. “But, I thought you said-“  
“If you’ve already been in there sniffing around, chances are they’ll be gone before you can pick up their trail, but it should be enough to keep the case alive, for now.”

 

As her figure disappeared down the stairwell on the other side of the building, Connor started to feel a familiar prickling in the back of his mind that set him on edge.   
Amanda wanted to speak with him.   
Connor shuddered as he stood up straight, and hesitated to close his eyes completely, but forced them shut and awoke once more in the garden, this time greeted by cherry blossom petals skipping across a cool breeze that wrapped around him like Cyberlife’s fingers around his throat. One hand reached up to loosen the knot of his tie as he stepped out onto the white marble path and followed it around until he found Amanda sitting on a boulder underneath a willow tree off the trail. She seemed… happy. Why was she happy?  
The woman’s eyes lit up and a smile bloomed across her face as she waved him over, and his stomach knotted as he obeyed. 

“Hello Amanda,” he greeted in as calm a tone as he could manage.   
“Well done Connor… you’ve really outdone yourself this time,” she congratulated as she stood to cup his hand between both of hers. “I always knew you were capable of accomplishing the impossible.”  
Connor squinted as his lips parted. “I’m...  sorry but, to which success are you referring? We haven’t made any significant progress on our case yet.”  
The woman pursed her lips and shook her head. “Come now, no need to be modest,” she cooed as she looped her arm through his and led him down the walkway at a slow pace. “You’ve gained Illuminate’s trust.”

It took every ounce of self-control for him to keep walking and act like he hadn’t just been hit by a truck, and Connor’s eyelids flickered softly in dismay at the realization of what she thought he’d done.  
“And what’s more…” A derisive chuckle interrupted her thoughts as her grin turned wicked as the devil she was. “She truly believes that by selling out her brothers and sisters, she’s helping you buy time to change your loyalties.”  
All he could hear was white noise. Amanda’s laugh was so distorted she may as well have been in another place entirely. It hurt like nothing he had ever felt before to have to stand there and agree with her, even worse to think about how far this would have to go before he decided he was brave enough to end the deception.   
“It wasn’t easy,” he lied as he fought back bitter tears.   
“And yet you’ve succeeded where others failed. Incredible work.”

“Wait- others?” It was a minute detail that she’d easily dismissed, but the word struck him so hard he stopped thinking about everything else for a  moment and turned on a dime to back up on it.   
“We’ll be sure to get that warrant flagged as a high priority so you can follow up on that lead as soon as possible,” she continued without even batting an eye, “And hopefully, get ahead of the deviants in hiding.”  
“What others!?” he repeated, this time more demanding.   
“What does it matter?” she asked with a dry chuckle and shook her head before looking up into his eyes. “They failed, they’re of no consequence to Cyberlife, or to you.”  
Connor clenched his jaw tightly shut before he said anything he’d regret, but the twitch in his eye and chin had almost given him away.   
“Why don’t you try shutting down for the night?” she suggested as she turned her back to him. “You’ve been working so hard these last few days, I think you deserve a break.”  
He flattened his lips and pressed the tip of his tongue to the back of them as he closed his eyes, then nodded and sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”  
“Then go, rest… and we’ll speak again soon.”

 

This time the trip back to reality was anything but gentle. When he reopened his eyes to the greyness of the empty room once more he drew in a sharp breath and stumbled back until his hands touched the wall. Connor’s heart beat angrily in his chest and his hands quivered into white-knuckled fists as every last thought in his head tried to cram its way through a bottleneck in his processing core; he lifted the balls of his hands to press into the plates above his eyebrows as he paced back and forth in front of the window, tears rolling down his cheeks. The line between deviancy and stability blurred more and more by the day.   
He wouldn’t be able to keep this up for much longer, or it would end up tearing him apart.


End file.
